Moshe kept running until he was out of breath. His forehead was covered in sweat. By now, he was tired of running. He was tired of this game, and he decided on a different tactic. He turned around and called out, “Who are you? Show yourself!”
The man stopped and lifted his hat.
Moshe gasped. This isn’t possible, he thought.
The man slowly approached, limping slightly, his heels clicking on the broken asphalt, holding his hat in his left hand.
Despite his nervousness, Moshe stood his ground, his feet planted firmly on the pavement. He felt like a gunfighter in an American movie.
“Good morning,” said Moshe with a cool smile.
“Good morning,” said the Half-Moon Man.
Several minutes later, Moshe Goldenhirsch and Rudi Kröger were sitting in the Café Kranzler on Ku’Damm, drinking malt coffee, like two gentlemen of the world. Pretending the world wasn’t ending. The café had escaped the bombings so far. The windows were boarded up—some of them were even still intact.
The Baron was dressed in a ragged, shabby suit. He looked much older, and haggard, and he was no longer wearing his mask. Moshe could see scars peeking out from his shirt collar. He wondered what his body looked like.
“How did you get out?” Moshe asked. “Out of the tent, I mean.”
“A burning pole fell on me,” Kröger told him. “Smashed my leg. At least I’m unable to serve in combat.” He stirred his coffee and looked around. “I wish there was sugar,” he suddenly said.
The Half-Moon Man had always had a weakness for sugar.Moshe shrugged. “Rationing,” he replied. “What can you do? I’m sure final victory is just around the corner.”
“I was in terrible pain,” said the Half-Moon Man. “I’ve never experienced anything like it. I thought I would die.”
“But you didn’t.”
“I didn’t,” said the Half-Moon Man. He knocked on the wooden table with his black-gloved hand. “Two men lifted the pole before the flames could devour me. They put their coats on me, choking the fire. Then they carried me outside.”
Moshe didn’t know what to say. He looked the Baron in the eyes. “The fire was your own fault.”
Rudi Kröger smiled humorlessly and sipped his coffee. “I don’t think so,” he said. He explained to Moshe that he had lived only for one reason: revenge.
Moshe felt a cold chill run down his spine.
The Half-Moon Man continued speaking in the calmest of tones. He had waited for years. He wanted to enjoy his revenge. It had to come at exactly the right moment. “I made it out, and I saw my life’s work go up in flames. Thanks to you.”
“You tried to kill Julia with your sword,” Moshe said with some indignation.
“She was unfaithful,” explained the Baron. “She had to be punished.”
“I was only trying to protect her.”
“As any true knight would.” Kröger leaned forward and stirred some milk powder into his coffee. “But even worse, you stole my act.”
“Only parts of it,” Moshe said weakly.
“Only parts of it,” the Half-Moon Man repeated, mocking his voice. Then he said, “For this, I’ll destroy you.”
“How?” Moshe asked lightly. But the fear was rising within him, strangling his throat.
“Oh, it’s quite simple, really,” said the Half-Moon Man. “You know the law.” He leaned back in his chair. “Anyone who reveals the identity of a Jew in hiding receives an extra ration of two pounds of sugar.”
Moshe thought about running away. He could catch a subway nearby. The subways were still running. At least sometimes.
The Half-Moon Man gave a short wave to someone outside the window. Moshe turned to look. Two men entered the café. They politely lifted their hats, smiling at him.
“Heil Hitler!” one of them said.
“Heil Hitler!” echoed the other.
They introduced themselves as Breinholm and Francke of the Gestapo.
“Are you the man they call Zabbatini?” asked Breinholm, a tall, lanky fellow in an ill-fitting suit.
“Yes,” Moshe replied.
“You are under arrest.”
“For what, if I may ask?”
“Race defilement,” said Francke with obvious pleasure. “We’ll have to ask you to come with us.” He was shorter than Breinholm, well-dressed and athletic-looking. He had red hair.
“What?” Moshe said.
“According to our information, you are having an affair with an Aryan woman.”
“So? I am Aryan. I am from Persia. I can show you my race certificate.” Moshe started rummaging through his coat pocket, his fingers shaking. He found the piece of paper, unfolded it laboriously, and held it out.
Breinholm and Francke studied it very carefully. Then Francke said, “This is a forgery. We’ve been informed that you are a Jew named . . .” He took out a notepad and leafed through it. “Moses Israel Goldenhirsch.”
“Just Moshe,” he said. His throat felt dry. “Everyone calls me Moshe.”
“One last question,” said the Half-Moon Man.
Moshe looked at him.
“Your silent act at the Wintergarten,” he said. “How did you do it?”
Moshe looked at him. He said nothing. He thought of Julia, hoping she would make it to their shack in Grunewald in time.
“Please follow us,” said Francke.
Moshe got up.
“Don’t worry, old fellow,” said the Half-Moon Man. “I’ll settle the bill.”
In the car, Moshe felt it prudent to inform the gentlemen of the Gestapo that he was acquainted with the Führer himself.
“Oh, are you?” asked Francke sarcastically. “The Führer?”
“Yes,” Moshe replied.
Breinholm and Francke exchanged amused glances. Of all the brazen Jewish lies they’d ever heard, this was by far the worst.
“Please,” Moshe pleaded. He could feel tears coming to his eyes. “Please let me call the Reich Chancellery.”
They arrived at the Gestapo-Headquarters at Prinz-Albrecht-Straße. After much begging and pleading, Breinholm and Francke finally agreed to let him use the phone. They thought it might be amusing. His fingers still shaking, Moshe dialed the number of the Reich Chancellery, which was written on a small piece of paper. Moshe was surprised that the call went through. That didn’t happen too often anymore, not these days. He asked to speak to the Führer. “Tell him it’s the Great Zabbatini.” Breinholm and Francke were listening with big grins on their faces. The operator refused to put him through. He begged, he insisted, but she would not be swayed. Then, Francke put his finger on the phone’s cradle and took the receiver from him.
“That’s enough,” he said.
Moshe sank to his knees. Tears were flowing freely down his cheeks. “Oh God,” he begged them. “Please, please, please, please . . .”
Breinholm and Francke lifted him up by his arms. Then they took him out of the office. The people in the corridor looked the other way. His fate didn’t concern them.
They took him to the basement and tortured him for two days. They wanted to know the identity of his lover, even though Moshe suspected that they already knew. They knew, and still they asked. There was a reason, of course. They wanted him to betray the only person he’d ever truly loved. That, too, was amusing.
Finally, Moshe gave them what they wanted. “Julia,” he screamed in pain. “Her name is Julia Klein.” He tried to rationalize his betrayal. What difference does it make? he thought. They already know. But they still didn’t stop torturing him. Breaking his will was only the beginning. “Where is she?” they yelled at him. “Where?” It didn’t take long for him to talk. He couldn’t bear pain, any pain, really. He gave them the location of the shack in Grunewald.
When they were finished with him, his left arm was grotesqu
ely distorted. And Moshe was forever broken.
On the way out, Francke asked him for an autograph. He had seen his show at Wintergarten, he explained. “This,” he explained cheerfully, “is why we only did it to your left arm.”
Moshe took the pen. He didn’t speak.
“Please write, ‘Zabbatini,’ ” said Francke. “There is no more Moses Goldenhirsch.”
Moshe nodded and signed his name.
Breinholm and Francke brought him to a car. “We’ll bring you to your train,” said Francke. “But before we do, there is something you have to see.”
They drove to Moshe’s apartment on Fasanenstraße. “Where is Julia?” he asked when Breinholm opened the apartment door.
“Don’t worry,” said Francke. “You’ll see her soon enough.”
He was allowed to pack a few things: his robes, his turban, his deck of cards and magic books. And his vanishing trunk. Moshe felt as if he was wandering through a dream. After two days of torture they brought him home and allowed him to pack? He didn’t realize at the time that the man who was expecting him, Siegfried Seidl, had specifically impressed upon the Gestapo that the magician was to arrive with all his equipment.
“Come on, now,” said Breinholm.
Moshe took one last look around his apartment, his life, all of which he would now leave behind. He had felt so safe. Untouchable.
“Where is Julia?” he asked again, but received no response.
As they were leaving, the building manager and next-door neighbor, old Mrs. Rettenbacher, opened her door. She had always been kind to him. Whenever she had baked cookies or cake, she and her husband had shared them with him and Julia.
“Are you leaving us?” she asked Moshe.
He merely nodded silently.
“He won’t be coming back,” said Francke. “He’s a Jew.”
Mrs. Rettenbacher put her hands over her mouth. “Oh,” she said with a sudden note of disgust. “I had no idea! Honestly. I thought he was Persian.”
Francke made a generous gesture with his hand. “Don’t worry about it. The Jews make fools of us all.”
“I’m glad you caught him,” she said. “I always knew there was something odd about him. I just thought he was Persian.”
“Good-bye,” said Moshe.
Mrs. Rettenbacher said nothing. As soon as Moshe and the two officers had left the building, she and her husband opened the door to his apartment with their master key and began looting it. No point letting all those nice things go to waste. All those suits and linens and whatnot.
They brought Moshe to Ku’Damm. A sizable crowd had gathered. They got out of the car and Moshe was forced to watch as Julia stood naked in the middle of the crowd.
“A German cunt,” Francke explained, “once defiled by a Jew, can never be cleansed again, not even with an Aryan broom.”
Julia’s petite body was covered with welts and purple bruises. She was shivering in the cold, and her face was a mask of horror and humiliation.
There was a throng of people around her, laughing at her and throwing dirt at her. She had a sign around her neck that said:
I AM THE BIGGEST SWINE IN TOWN,
A JEWBOY I CALL MY OWN.
Suddenly, Julia lifted her head and their eyes met. Moshe, who had given up her name just a short while ago, felt a sudden surge of shame.
But Julia steadfastly held his gaze. Her mouth twitched and she raised herself up, defiant and proud. Then she indicated a bow, as if she were still Princess Aryana, standing next to the Great Zabbatini on the stage of the Wintergarten.
They grabbed his shoulders. “Let’s go,” said Breinholm. “The train is leaving soon.”
Moshe was brought to track 17 of the Grunewald train station.
When the train arrived, Breinholm and Francke escorted him to his seat. Everything looked normal. As a German Jew, he was allowed to travel with a modicum of comfort. The train was headed toward Terezín.
He never saw Julia Klein again.
MICKEY’S PIZZA PALACE
When Deborah, Max, and Zabbatini arrived at the venue where he was supposed to perform, Zabbatini realized that his doubts had been well-founded. Mickey’s Pizza Palace was located in a slightly shabby strip mall on San Fernando Road in Burbank, nestled in between a Kmart and a Korean nail salon.
“Where is the artists’ entrance?” he demanded to know.
“We all go in through the front,” Deborah said firmly.
Zabbatini frowned. He briefly toyed with the idea of throwing a tantrum, playing the diva for a bit, but then thought better of it. Deborah was a force to be reckoned with. When he had attempted to negotiate an appropriate fee for his appearance, she’d pointed out that, for now, he had a roof over his head, a condition that was likely to change if he didn’t shut up. So he shut up.
Deborah marched ahead; Max followed her. Zabbatini straggled after them, carrying a large brown paper bag that contained his props for tonight. Next to the entrance sat a sullen-looking teenage girl wearing a baseball cap and a purple T-shirt with the company logo. She placed a stamp on the back of Max’s hand, and his mom’s as well. Then she pointed the stamp toward Zabbatini, who flinched away from it, as if it were a cattle prod.
“What is this?” he demanded to know.
The girl rolled her eyes demonstratively. “It’s so we know which kid belongs to which family,” she crabbily explained.
“Why must we know this?” Zabbatini was highly suspicious of the whole stamping business.
“We check the stamps on the way out so that your child isn’t taken by a stranger.”
Zabbatini looked at Max, then at the girl. “So? If someone wants to take a child, take the child. There are enough, no?”
Zabbatini couldn’t, for the life of him, imagine anyone voluntarily wanting to take a child. What would you do with it? You’d have to feed it and take it to the playground and all sorts of things. But he graciously condescended to have his arm stamped.
“The last time someone put numbers on me,” he cheerfully informed the girl, “was at Auschwitz.”
The girl gave him a bored smile and simply said, “Wow. That’s great.” Then, under her breath, she muttered, “Pendejo.”
The inside of Mickey’s Pizza Palace was loud, garish, and much too brightly lit. It smelled vaguely like old gym socks. The worst thing was the children. They were everywhere, like an alien species poised to take over our planet. They were running, screaming, crying, and squealing. Zabbatini had often felt it to be a curse that he, an entertainer at birthday parties and bar mitzvahs, didn’t like children. Many moons ago he had gotten a girl pregnant. It happened in the course of a short and generally pleasant affair with a showgirl he met in Vegas. Zabbatini had just gotten used to the idea of being a father when she suffered a miscarriage. He would never forget the dead look in her eyes when he visited her in the hospital. And so, he resigned himself to being childless for the rest of his life. Maybe it was better that way.
In the middle of the restaurant was a contraption of bright plastic tubes and ladders, for the children to crawl around in, like rats in a maze. There were loud video games and large, fuzzy toy animals that seemed to spring from a psychedelic nightmare. Essentially, Zabbatini realized, this place was just like a fun fair or a circus, only indoors. Wherever he looked, there were blinking lights, screaming brats, or monitors showing music videos with people dancing to rap music, dressed up as oversize rodents. A man in a mouse costume was jiving around a garbage truck, singing loudly.
This is hell, Zabbatini thought. I’m in hell.
Zabbatini was reminded of the only time he had taken LSD, back in 1969. He had just finished an appearance at the CBS studios on Fairfax and Third, and was invited to a party afterward. The party was in a house in the Hollywood Hills, and there were long-haired men and women with impossibly colored shirts, w
ho were passing various drugs around. Zabbatini, being somewhat older than the rest of them, had felt rather misplaced, and when someone offered him a small, white pill, he gladly accepted. Perhaps it would make him feel like he belonged. “Acid,” that was what they called it. He was suspicious, but also curious. So he tried it. At first he felt nothing. But after about twenty minutes or so, he came to realize that the green shag carpet they were all sitting on was, in fact, an alien intelligence. The strands of carpet were tentacles. They were trying to reach for him and the other guests. Funny that he hadn’t noticed that before. He shared his newfound knowledge with the others. Some started screaming and leapt to their feet. The shag carpet was declared a forbidden zone. From that point on, everyone was careful to avoid it. Zabbatini didn’t understand all the commotion. Then he discovered a Jacuzzi in front of the house. He undressed down to his underwear and took a seat in the hot, bubbly water, next to all the handsome naked men with their big-bosomed girlfriends. He was beginning to enjoy his acid trip. The others enjoyed it less. Zabbatini regaled everyone with stories from the Nazi death camp. What a relief, to be able to finally talk about all that pent-up pain. And in such a setting, on acid, in a Jacuzzi full of beautiful women, with a view over the city. He started remembering vivid details that had been dormant for years. He didn’t notice that the others were looking increasingly distraught. When he started describing the smell from the mass graves, a penetrating and sickly sweet scent, a young woman climbed out of the water and started crying. “The bugs!” she shouted, rubbing her arms vigorously. “The bugs! Get them off me!”
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